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Friday links — A few thoughts on recruiting, and more

This is the second of four weekends when UW and other schools will host official visits before letter-of-intent signing day Feb. 6.

The early buzz is that the Huskies may mostly have players in who are already committed. Scout/Dawgman.com lists five visitors, all of whom are committed — WR Darrell Daniels, DT Elijah Qualls, LB Sean Constantine, CB Kevin King and DL Jaimie Bryant.

If so, that could lead to another weekend when there is no real “news” on recruiting coming out of UW. Someone noted to me this week that it seems like this has been a quieter-than-usual month so far when it comes to recruiting.

Certainly has been when compared to last year, when UW opened the month by firing much of its defensive coaching staff, and then midway through ended up luring away Tosh Lupoi from Cal, which then led to a pretty frantic last few weeks.

This year, with the coaching staff relatively stable, the Huskies got a lot more commitments early that don’t appear to be changing. UW has 21 commits for this class (though two already are enrolled) and likely taking 4-6 more or so.

Also, the state of Washington had a few more big-time recruits last year who waited until the last month to make a decision — Zach Banner, Josh Garnett, etc. It seemed like every few days last year in January there was someone making an announcement. This year, the only major in-state recruit over whom there appears to be some uncertainty is Bellevue LB Myles Jack, who has said he will not make a final decision/announcement until after he takes all four of his visits — he’s expected at UCLA this weekend, UW next weekend and then Oregon the final weekend.

And there’s another factor — that it seems like most of the big names left that UW is pursuing, such as LB Reuben Foster and DT Eddie Vanderdoes, are likely waiting until after they take all of their trips to announce.

Of course, this being recruiting, things can change at any moment (it won’t be a surprise if another name or two crops up on the visitor list for this weekend). But what could be happening this year is that the craziness will really be compressed into the last few days prior to LOI Day.

IN OTHER NEWS. …

— The Oregonian updates the happenings at Oregon and also assesses how much impact Chip Kelly’s departure will have on recruiting. As that story notes, at the moment only one full-time assistant is going with Kelly, indicating that the staff may staff pretty much intact there.

— ESPN.com’s Kevin Gemmell says UW’s win over Stanford was his favorite game of the season.

— Mike Farrell of Rivals.com offers a bunch of thoughts on recruiting, and says he thinks Oregon will struggle to keep its class intact, that Foster is likely headed to Alabama, Auburn or Georgia, and that he expects OL Nico Falah to re-commit to USC rather than switch to UW.

— ESPN.com’s Ted Miller ponders what might happen if UW goes 7-6 again, among other topics, in his weekly chat.

— Aaron Roderick, who was UW’s WR coach for a week or so in 2009, has again decided to stay at Utah after briefly taking a job at BYU.